Miss Zealand - Avianca Bohm - may be forced to surrender her title because she's not actually from the country. The model won the annual beauty pageant on Saturday (May 9, 2012), but it's since been discovered that she was born in South Africa - something the organizers were apparently aware of.
According to the New Zealand Herald, pageant director Val Lott permitted Bohm to compete because it would be "confidence boosting" for both the model and her local area of New Zealand. However, the condition of entry was that she didn't win the competition - even though she did. Confused? Well, Lott explained that it was made clear to the chief judge that he should not choose Bohm as the winner, saying, "It's not embarrassing for the competition. It's embarrassing for the [chief] judge, who should have taken on board what I said to him.It says that in their entry form. [Ms Bohm] and I both had a clear understanding that she couldn't win". Why the model was permitted entry into the contest if she couldn't win remains to be seen, and deciding who shouldn't win beforehand must surely be against the rules of the competition.
The controversy comes shortly after Miss USA contestant Sheena Monnin accused Sunday's pageant of being rigged. Donald Trump, head of the Miss Universe Organization that runs Miss USA, has reportedly drawn up a lawsuit against Ms Monnin, reports the UK's Huffington Post.